'Ball in the Family' confirms LaVar Ball's role in LiAngelo Ball leaving UCLA

LiAngelo Ball’s withdrawal from UCLA back in December sparked a wide array of reactions, including questions about how and why the decision was characterized not as the 19-year-old’s but rather LaVar Ball’s. On this week’s episode of Facebook Watch’s “Ball in the Family,” entitled “Gelo’s Birthday Wish,” the middle son himself describes the move as the result of the Big Baller Brand CEO’s agency, not his own.

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“I know people will doubt it and I know there will be haters, but I’m fully on board with my dad’s decision to pull me from UCLA because now I can focus 100 percent on training for my pro career,” Gelo says toward the end of the episode. “It’s always been my goal to get to the NBA. I’ma do whatever it takes and I’ma work harder than ever to get there. There’s no days off. This is what we do.”

The change only came after LaVar learned that UCLA wouldn’t have a proper punishment in place for LiAngelo’s shoplifting arrest in China for two months. As it turned out, fellow freshmen Cody Riley and Jalen Hill were suspended for the season. That wouldn’t have flown at all with LaVar’s plan to have Gelo spend just one year in Westwood before shuffling him along to the NBA Draft.

Kudos to LiAngelo for boldly pursuing his dream by giving up his scholarship to one of the greatest basketball training grounds in the sport’s history. But the notion that Gelo, a legal adult, ceded his own free will in this instance feels a bit off, doesn’t it?